On Thursday I met with Robert and Cathy—Art Center College of Design’s archivists.
We had a long conversation about the issues, concerns, problems, benefits, and successes of archives, the archiving practice, and means of access by many different types of users.
The following is an audio file of that conversation.
Interview w/ Robert and Cathy from Parker Kuncl on Vimeo.
Notes from my conversation with Robert and Cathy:
The definitions of archive can be confusing.
National Archives is really mainly government records, but some archives have special collections.
Libraries vs archives vs special collections. Library is the umbrella.
Libraries are typically open. Archives can be closed to public.
Main issues are funding and revenue, they don’t produce any rev.
Preservation and deterioration.
Appraisals and processing a collection. Processing in archiving terms means to organize and triage documents and artifacts.
Processing “BOXES” of stuff.
Institution, business, organization.
To get really confusing, some of those groups might house their archives at another institution that has nothing to do with it.
Art center’s archives is relatively new. They always said they had one but really it was boxes under some stairs.
Archivists determine what is important. They triage the info, the artifact, the source.
Not just presentation of the info.
Not just the content but the context.
The physical form of the ORIGINAL ORDER (creation order) is usually not as important as the context of the content. Usually its not that important.
With a famous van gough painting, you wouldn’t scan it and shrink it down and put a copy of it on the wall. The original artifact and presentation is important. So it depends really.
Throw away vs keeping everything. tossers vs pack rats.
Some institutions want archives to WEED a lot, keep clean important info only. Others want it all.
Archivists either come from HISTORY background or LIBRARY science backgrounds.
(57:00)Some archivists miss the card catalogs and typed finding aides, some now love the technology. How it used to be or the new tech stuff.
“The archives are the most important coolest part of our school” =D
(58:00)”I gotta admit, its a far out concept for archives.”
Usually people don’t want anyone to touch the stuff, the things that are put away in boxes, white gloves, etc.
Its done in a serious way, and you don’t know necessarily what’s there.
(1:04:00)”It’s like treasure hunting”
“Some people will be hunched over a folder reading, searching, and then suddenly scream.
(1:07:00)World of coca cola was designed by archivists.
(1:18:00) Web 2.0, archivists are just looking into it. Librarians have been embracing it.
Some university in Utah in 1994 put some enrico coruso’s sound recordings on the internet, it was revolutionary. We haven’t really come farther than from 14 years ago.
KCRW’s archive is an archive of original culture.
(1:26:00) what is lost
(1:28:00) Someone might call and ask for the archivists to find one photo of something. They need it fast.
But then some might come in and browse, they are looking to be inspired form coming here.
Without serendipity, taxonomy/folksonomy becomes huge.
(1:29:00) inspiration
1:30:00 Some people really fetishize the artifacts, where some historians just want context.
Geneologists love the originals, love the smell.
Average person just wants it available, on their mp3 player.
POTENTIALLY LOST: fetishization, context, inspiration, serendipity.
Dan Lewis @ The Huntington.
626.405.2206
